well of him, and apparently everybody but herself trusted him
implicitly. And yet, to her own certain knowledge, he did carry a jug,
he did follow her about the hills, and he did tell her to her face
that when she found her father's claim she would have a race on her
hands, and that if she were beaten she would have to be satisfied with
what she would get.

But Vil Holland, his comings and his goings were soon forgotten in the
absorbing interest with which Patty listened as her little gray-haired
hostess recounted incidents and horrors of the Indian uprising, the
first sporadic depredations, the coming of the troops, and finally the
forcing of the belligerent tribes onto their reservations.

It had been Patty's intention to ride back to her cabin in the
evening, but Mrs. Samuelson would not hear of it. And, indeed the girl
did not insist, for despite the fact that she had become thoroughly
accustomed to her surroundings, the anticipation of a dinner prepared
and served by the highly efficient Wong Yie, in the tastefully
appointed dining room, with its real silver and china, proved
sufficiently attractive to overcome even her impatience to begin the
working out of her father's map. And the realization fully justified
the anticipation. When the meal was finished the two women had talked
the long evening away before the cheerful blaze of the wood fire, and
when at last she was shown to her room, the girl retired to luxuriate
in a real bed of linen sheets and a box mattress.

CHAPTER XV

THE HORSE RAID

Patty did not know how long she had slept when she awoke, tense and
listening, sitting bolt upright in bed. Moonlight flooded the room
through the windows thrown wide to admit the chill night air. Beyond
the valley floor, green with the luxuriant second crop of alfalfa, she
could see the mountains looming dim and mysterious in the half-light.

The whole world seemed silent as the grave--and yet, something must
have awakened her. She shuddered, partly at the chill that struck at
her thinly clad shoulders, and partly at the recollection of some of
the scenes those selfsame mountains had witnessed, during the
uprisings, and which her hostess had so vividly recounted. The girl
smiled, and gazing toward the mountains, pictured long lines of naked
horsemen stealing silently into the valley. She started violently.
Through the open window came sounds, the muffled thud of hoofs upon
the soft ground, the low rattle of b